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The Likelihood of Halophilic Life in the Universe

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Life on Earth and other Planetary Bodies

Part of the book series: Cellular Origin, Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology ((COLE,volume 24))

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Abstract

The search for extraterrestrial life has been declared as a goal for the twenty-first century by several space agencies (Foing, 2002). Potential candidates are microorganisms on or in the surfaces of moons and planets. Extremely halophilic archaea (haloarchaea) are of astrobiological interest since viable strains have been isolated from million-year-old deposits of halite (McGenity et al., 2000; Stan-Lotter et al., 1999, 2002; Fendrihan et al., 2006), suggesting the possibility of long-term survival under desiccation. Extraterrestrial halite has been identified, for example, in Martian meteorites (Treiman et al., 2000), in chloride-containing surface pools on Mars (Osterloo et al., 2008), and in the presumed salty ocean beneath the ice cover of Jupiter’s moon Europa (McCord et al., 1998). These discoveries make a consideration of the potential habitats for halophilic life in space intriguing. Recent data on the physical occurrence of liquid saline water on Mars (Smith et al., 2009; Renno et al., 2009) have added another novel aspect to this notion, since such “cryobrines” would provide liquid phases on the Martian surface, allowing perhaps metabolic activity of halophilic microorganisms.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) projects P16260-B07 and P18256-B06 and by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) project HALOSPACE. We thank C. Gruber for expert technical assistance and M. Mayr and Salinen Austria for help in obtaining rock salt samples.

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  1. Department of Microbiology, Division of Molecular Biology, University of Salzburg, Billrothstr. 11, A-5020, Salzburg, Austria

    Helga Stan-Lotter, Marion Dorn-Mayr-Pfaffenhuemer, Andrea Legat, Anita k. Holzinger, Michael Grösbacher & Andreas Weigl

  2. Romanian Bioresource Centre and Advanced Research, Aleea Istru nr. 2C, bl. A14B, sc.8, et.2 apt.113, sect.6, Bucharest, Romania

    Sergiu Fendrihan

  3. Geomicrobiology Research Group, Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK

    Tatjana K. Polacsek

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  1. Helga Stan-Lotter
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Correspondence to Helga Stan-Lotter .

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  1. Institut für Geophysik, Astrophysik und Meteorologie, Universität Graz, Universitätsplatz 5, Graz, 8010, Austria

    Arnold Hanslmeier

  2. , Physical Geology and Global Cycles, Institute of Applied Geosciences (IAG), Schnittspahnstraße 9, Darmstadt, 64287, Germany

    Stephan Kempe

  3. University of Jerusalem, Mevo Hadas 20, Efrat, 90435, Israel

    Joseph Seckbach

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Stan-Lotter, H. et al. (2012). The Likelihood of Halophilic Life in the Universe. In: Hanslmeier, A., Kempe, S., Seckbach, J. (eds) Life on Earth and other Planetary Bodies. Cellular Origin, Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology, vol 24. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4966-5_20

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